After Corona largely reined our intercontinental travel plans over most of the last two years, we had kind of a glut there at the end of the 2021. We spent some time in November with Sarah’s family in KCMO (she longer than I, due to work BS), and then with my parents in Puerto Vallarta and some (kinda) new friends in Mexico City in December. So yeah, two trips to North America inside of two months. Under pandemic conditions. Couple of brain swabs. Plenty of document collection. Lots of umpteen-hour FFP2 mask sessions. It all went smoothly — it was just at the beginning of the Great Omicron Flight Cancellation Crisis of 2021-22.
Our theater of operations (neglecting the overnight stay in Newark on the way down to Puerto Vallarta, because hey, it’s just Newark):
After finishing up Mittagessen in…um…Essen ((Forgive me.)), we got back in the car and drove for like seven hours across most of the country to Berlin. We’ve visited Berlin many times, but we always try to do a mix of new and old stuff. Here are the bullet points:
Indian food around the corner (practically) from our excellent hosts at https://karma-berlin.de
Cool strolling and shopping in and around the Tempelhofer Hafen
Gluten-free baked goods (actually delicious!) and coffee at Café Pretty Hill in Schöneberg ((It is embarrassing how long it took us to get the pun on the name.))
And, then on our way home to Regensburg, A BONUS VISIT with three Leipziger pals!
More delicious Indian food (and OMG, they were not kidding about the spiciness levels on that Paneer Jalfrezi) at https://www.safran-leipzig.de.
Scored some post-dinner drinks at a Späti to enjoy on a stroll and in a park (by the way, duck into the university library there in Leipzig — what a cool place!).
Even snagged a couple night shots on our way back to the hotel.
After that, it was a completely uneventful drive back home. Just what you want!
It felt really good. So good, that I can’t cover it all in one post. Part II will follow.
Wiesbaden
It was just a stop-over point for us because we departed Friday after work and didn’t want to undertake a big ol’ drive after a full week of anticipation. Plus, our long-term pal and host Matt K. wouldn’t even be there until Saturday afternoon. So we got to Wiesbaden after work (traffic was not as bad as I’d feared) and expected to crash out at the hotel.
But it’s much a cooler town than I’d thought. And it has a Five Guys. Note to self: don’t get a large ANYTHING.
Brussels
We arrived on late Saturday morning, and met Matt G. at Place du Chatelain in the Ixelles neighborhood. He gave us a lovely impromptu tour and we got a delicious lunch on the street at Pizza Mamma Roma.
That afternoon we got back in the car, headed out to the Zaventem airport, picked up our ol’ pal Matt K. and the merriment continued.
He showed us his favorite parts of the city on foot, including a stop for a snack at the legendary Maison Dandoy for some Liège Waffles and espresso that blew our minds.
Sunday, we visited the Horta Museum. If you like Jugendstil design, this will be your joint. As opposed to the Mucha Museum in Prague, the Horta Museum is a less of a gallery and more of a snapshot in time from the turn of the (previous) century of an idealized socialist paradise domicile.
We walked around a bit more and then circled back to La Chatelaine Du Liban for a lovely dinner.
Monday morning, we dropped Matt K. off at work on our way to meet Pam M. at her home for coffee. She baked us a delicious surprise zucchini cake! The airliners passing overhead reminded me very much of the first ten years of my life near Selfridge ANG.
It was so cool to catch up with Matt K. again before geography makes that impractical again, and meet Matt G. and Pam M. in person after only having interacted with them online before.
Essen
After departing from Pam’s, we hit the road for Essen to meet up with Aileen and Justin for…Essen. ((I bet they’ve never heard that joke before.)) It was almost directly on our way, and we have had a lot of fun with them online, so why not see if they are just as cool in person? ((Spoiler: they are!)) That was a nice way to break up the seven-hour drive to Berlin. If you ever get a hankering for a BIG SLABBA TOAST, I vouch for Miamamia.
After a four-hour drive down Germany’s western border with France and a hop through the Schwarzwald towards Bonndorf…im Schwarzwald, we arrived at the final Ferienwohnung destination for this trip. The arrival was not without its complications, however; TWO of the little towns off through which we were supposed to drive on the last leg of the drive were closed to through traffic, causing us to scramble and miss our predicted arrival time by an hour. Fortunately, we kept the landlady in the loop and she was accommodating. Ha. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 3: Schwarzwald
We were originally going to head from Freinsheim across the South of France towards its Atlantic coast, but…Covid-19 happened.
Most of our winey traveller activities in Germany have been along the Weinstraße but there are lots more spots to visit for a tipple. Like the whole Rheingau. So, with a lot of the travel demand reduced in general and all regions of Germany back to school (whether in classroom settings or otherwise), the selection of Ferienwohnungen on short notice when all the relevant regions of France hit the Risikogebiet list was surprisingly rich. We picked out a Ferienwohnung in a former nuns’ home directly on the banks of the Rhine in Lorchhausen. Continue reading Fall 2020 Vacation — Part 2: Rheingau
The annual Kulinarische Weinwanderung in Freinsheim didn’t happen this year (but you can relive its glory through our write-ups here, here, here, here, and here if you like).
In December 2019, we spent a couple weeks at one of our usual vacation destinations. But we did a ton of new stuff. See all our posts tagged with Puerto Vallarta.
Background
We are fully aware of our coffee dependency — never moreso than while hopping time zones. So we decided to Learn the Process of Coffee Roasting via this AirBnB Experience, which popped up while searching for things to do in the area. We were looking to AirBnB for inspiration after our good buddy Kristin’s recommendation to take the Pasteis de Nata baking class during our trip to Porto.
Getting There
Daniel’s coffee shop, La Cabra y La Mata, is not in Puerto Vallarta. It’s not even in Jalisco. But it’s less than an hour away by bus in Bucerías, a sleepy resort town north of Nuevo Vallarta with long stretches of beach.
We started our journey with a walk to the airport — about 20 minutes from our home base in PV — and caught a bus going towards Bucerías, or maybe La Cruz de Huanacaxtle or Sayulita. Bus fare was $20 MXN per person each way, payable in cash to the driver upon boarding and stating our destination. That works out to around a dollar or euro, depending on the exchange rate. We monitored our progress on the bus via GPS and just got out at a stop that seemed close enough.
Modena and Parma were undiscovered country for us. We’d been to Bologna before (ten years ago!). We’d heard good things about Emilia-Romagna and Italian cuisine from various sources — including our waiter at Colline Emiliane on our trip to Rome. But for all the famous foody aspects of this bit of Italy (balsamico, parmesan cheese, prosciutto), we’d never actually been. Well, why the heck not? We loved both these cities.
We’ve visited Piombino Dese twicebefore, at the agriturismo "Ca’ de Memi." It’s a great place to stay on its own, due to its location in Veneto: Bassano del Grappa, Asolo, Treviso, and Castelfranco are all easily reachable by car or train. It’s also a fantastic place to eat. If you’re going to visit Ca’ de Memi, book it soon, because this month they got a write-up in the Guardian as one of the ten best cooking classes with stays in Europe. We have enjoyed their food immensely, but not yet taken a cooking course there…maybe next time!
This time the draw to us was the five-minute walk from the train station. From there we did a 40-minute train trip to Santa Lucia station in Venice.
It’s not every year that we get TWO trips to Italy. Last time our focus was Tuscany. This time was a mix of new and old destinations in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, showing Sarah’s mom some stuff we knew, and some we didn’t. Clearly this is going to have to be split into several different posts. We took way too many pictures to cover it all in one post. Stay tuned for individual segments to follow.
